Smart businesses don't wait until they start losing money to make adjustments. They plan ahead. These "margin increases" are literally increases due to inflation which will companies expect to take hold over the next 1-2 years. There could be a variety of factors for this. One such example is corporate bonds rolling over to new interest rates which are expected to start happening en masse very soon.
This might be a really, really stupid question, but aren't corporate decisions sort of the economy?
But all those pale in comparison to Mr. Powell and his associate's decisions.
I'll buy the media narrative this time, thank you.
Of course right now everything is complicated by the fact officials lied to us that inflation is "transitory". As you can imagine, corporations don't take officials at their word, they can hire economists that double check their claims[1]. The media is supposed to do that in service of ordinary people, but for some reason I don't think it did in this inflationary period.
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[1] And corporations who blindly take officials at their words, like the late Silicon Valley Bank, simply enter liquidation.
Isn't this exactly why we should buy into this narrative? The manufacturers increased their margins, so Carrefour sells more expensive, but in the end gets the same total profit.